Peggy Johnson elected a bishop of The United Methodist Church
By Linda Bloom
July 17, 2008 | Harrisburg PA (UMNS)
Bishop-elect Peggy Johnson
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The Rev. Peggy A. Johnson of Baltimore has been elected a bishop by the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Johnson, 54, pastor of Christ United Methodist Church
of the Deaf, was elected July 17 by jurisdictional conference
delegates. On Sept. 1, she will become one of nine active bishops in the
Northeastern Jurisdiction, which includes 13 annual (regional)
conferences from Maine to West Virginia.
A consecration service for Johnson is set for 11:15 a.m. on July 18 at Grace United Methodist Church. Geographical assignments for the jurisdiction’s bishops will be announced earlier that day.
Endorsed by the Baltimore-Washington Conference and the
Association of Physically Challenged Ministers, Johnson was elected on
the 10th ballot, receiving 163 of 248 votes cast.
The Northeastern Jurisdiction has two retiring bishops, Bishop Violet L. Fisher of Rochester, N.Y.,
and Bishop Susan Morrison, who took early retirement. Because of a
planned change in annual conference boundaries and a reduction from 10
to nine episcopal areas in 2010, only one new bishop was elected.
Johnson has been actively involved in the United Methodist
Congress of the Deaf since 1988 and has supported a deaf ministry effort
in Zimbabwe through her conference. Since 1995, she has been an adjunct faculty member at Wesley Theological Seminary.
She served as a General Conference delegate from 1996 through
2008; was a member of the Board of Higher Education and Ministry from
1996 to 2000; served as a consultant on deaf ministry for the Board of
Global Ministries from 2001 to 2004 and was a member of the NEJ
episcopacy committee from 2000 to 2004.
Johnson received “The Circuit Rider of the Year Award” from the
United Methodist Publishing House in 1990 and “The Pillar of Faith
Award” from Howard Divinity School in 2006.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa., in 1975, a master of divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., in 1980 and a doctor of ministry degree from Wesley in 1993.
Besides Christ Church, she has served at Fulton-Siemers Memorial and Lansdowne United Methodist churches in Baltimore and the Mount Pleasant charge in Frederick, Md. She also was chaplain at Gallaudet University in Washington from 1985 to 1986.
Johnson received the “HIV/AIDS Activist Award” from the Family
Service Foundation of Baltimore in 2004 and the “Helping Hand Award”
from the Maryland Association of the Deaf in 1991 and 2005. She
currently is a part of the Maryland Governor’s Office of Deaf and Hard
of Hearing Mental Health Task Force.
A United Methodist bishop in the United States is elected for life and, although
eight years is the standard term for a bishop to serve in an episcopal
area, it is not unusual for a bishop to be assigned to one area for 12
years for “missional reasons.”
Bishops are charged by the church’s Book of Discipline
to “lead and oversee the spiritual and temporal affairs” of the church
and to “guard, transmit, teach and proclaim, corporately and
individually, the apostolic faith as it is expressed in Scripture and
tradition, and, as they are led and endowed by the Spirit, to interpret
that faith evangelically and prophetically.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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